Port Aransas

(click on photos for larger images)

Every year we head to the Texas Gulf coast for a long weekend.  I seem to have yearly posts on the trip (although we've been going many more years than I've been blogging!) and it's fun to look back. I was shocked, however, to realize how easily Sammy took to the sand and the water the past couple of years because this year, from the very first step off the end of the boardwalk, he had an absolute phobia of sand.

Yes, sand.  Terrified, I tell you. 

As you can imagine, it isn't so easy to avoid sand at the beach!  We never figured out what the problem was and he never got past it.  He was convinced that the sand was scary in some way.  It was a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy because his instinct was to try to wipe the horrific substance off the bottom of his foot on the inside of the other leg... and that is exactly where he has the most trouble with his eczema.  It's not surprising that salty sand is really painful on eczema-cracked skin.  But even when he seemed to be able to accept that no rattlesnake or sand crab was going to get him, and the sand wouldn't hurt if he didn't rub it into his wounds, he was still frightened!

James went to town and bought Sammy some water shoes that encased his feet more than his little flip-flops and they helped... but they didn't fix the problem.  He wanted to be carried from the boardwalk to a chaise lounge, where he would sit on his platform and lean over to dig in the sand with a shovel.  He seemed to have a good time and was mostly happy doing that.  Occasionally he would venture onto the hard-packed sand near the water but never, never onto the softer sand farther from the shore.  We really tried to talk him into it, coax him along, insist that we weren't carrying him... but he was frozen with fear and screaming in terror.  And then he would end up grinding the sand into the already bleeding skin from the last time and we had to scoop him up and go wash him off in fresh water... so it ended up seeming just not worth it.

I showed Sammy pictures of last year when he played in the sand with no problem.  He says he's going to be done with being scared of the sand next year.  Even with the strange sand-o-phobia we had a great time overall!  The weather was beautiful.  Two days were sunny and hot and two days had some rain and a lovely little fall chill, though still plenty of time to be on the beach. 

I've been playing around with some of the images I liked from the trip, so I thought I'd share those.  (As always, click on the images to see them bigger.)

[If you are interested in the post processing done on these photos, check out Pioneer Woman's FREE photoshop/elements actions.  Those are what I used and they are really fun!]

Scrapbook Layout: Elk Camp

I've been thinking this week about Elk Camp since my extended family has been there the past few weeks.  This is a two to three week camping trip out in the woods in northern Arizona.  Those who want (my dad, uncle, brother-in-law, etc) apply to a state drawing to get to do an archery hunt for elk.  We have gone in the past but did not go this year since Zack is in school now.  It's quite an experience!  you can read about the last time we went here. 

While I was talking to my family members on the phone and hearing about the crazy hail storms and incessant rain they've had, I realized I hadn't ever shown my layout about our previous trip.  I thought I'd go back and pull it out to show.

One thing that made this layout a challenge was that I had SO many pictures and so much journaling.  There was no way I could get down to just two or three pictures.  I managed to narrow it down to 16 photos - and that was hard enough!  Then I needed to have room to tell the main story of the trip plus some notes on each photo.  To me, the challenging thing about having so much is that the more you have, the more whitespace you need for the eye to be able to make sense of what is there.  I settled on a design that allowed me to include all those pictures and all that text and still have plenty of empty space (green space functioning as whitespace this time). 

To do that I really had to rely heavily on the structure provided by a grid, so I made several small collage photos in Picasa, printed them as 4x6s, and cut them apart to be used in a long strip of images.  I put them at the bottom of the page since the block seemed so weighty.  That allowed space for some featured images at the top. 

Finally, I used number stickers to number each image and journaled it's corresponding note below the grid.  This has given me a formula I can return to when I have tons of pictures for one story.  You make recognize I used it again here in the Kindergarten year-in-review layout. Give it a try if you need a design for lots of photos! 

Diamond Crater State Park

Zack is crazy about collecting rocks.  He is convinced his finds are very valuable.  He stores them in treasure boxes varying from paperboard boxes from the craft store that he painted himself, to clear stacking screw-top organizers, to shoe boxes, to the old dog house in the back yard.  He even has some extra boxes from my jewelry on which he as written "PResHus RocKs GeMs".  Sometimes I have to do a sweep of the house and send a big pile of rocks back outside.  James had the idea to structure some actual rock collecting into our summer trip, so one of our destinations was Diamond Crater State Park in southwestern Arkansas. 

We spoke to several people who thought it might not be worth a day but for us, it was great. This may not be something the kids will love in a few years but they loved it at this time!  The diamond area in the state park is a field in which diamond-containing rock runs seven miles deep.  Every month or so they plow the field, exposing new soil and rocks.  You pay an admission fee and dig as long as you want (all day! It's only 100 degrees!), keeping anything you find.  There are diamonds found regularly - mostly yellow or brown but some white too.  Half-carat diamonds were found right before our visit so they are definitely there! 

You can walk along and look, dig in the furrows and do "dry sifting", or use the ramadas (shade!!) to do "wet sifting".  Zack dug, Sammy roamed around, and I did wet sifting.  It was more work than Zack was expecting and the weather was really hot but we all had fun. 

By mid-day we'd had our fill of dirt and heat and not found any diamonds so we decided to call it quits and headed to the attached splash park and pool.  Now, someone was really thinking with that pool attached to the hot, dry diamond field!  That was at least as good as the diamond hunting.  The pool was mostly two and two and a half feet deep - a great depth for our young kids.  With the slides, fountains and play structures, it was a great place to play.  Before this both Zack and Sammy had been really timid in the water, clinging to our necks or the side of the pool.  But there the shallow water and beach entry gave them a chance to play without being nervous - I think they gained a lot of confidence that has been benefiting us going forward!  

 

Turtle Spotting

We rented a paddle boat on Town Lake for a fun outing with the boys this weekend.  We paddled west along the bank seeing lots of turtle families.  Sammy started out freaked out and crying but he was able to adjust and have fun.  We were really relieved since he's been scared by a wide variety of things lately. 

We all had a great time but let me share a word to the wimpy: paddling back against the wind was really hard!  We kept getting stuck and pushed backwards.  Kayaks were sailing along next to us with no trouble but our big paddle boat was not very easy to get back to the dock!

Afterward, what else but burgers at Sandy's on Barton Springs?

McKinney Falls State Park

Looking for a little day hike in the Austin area? McKinney Falls State Park is perfect for hikes, picnics and swimming.  There are also some cool activities at their nature center.  We started at the nature center, walked through the rock overhang and down to the falls.  Sammy was able to walk all the way there and back!  Doesn't he look big? 

Here was something creepy (April, skip this paragraph) - there are these fuzzy areas on the ceiling of the rock overhang.  I walked under them without thinking much about them until Zack asked James about them.  Even looking closer it seemed to be some kind of loose moss.  James held the boys up and then touched the edge of one clump.  It spread out and started pulsing, hundreds of spiders moving up and down in a loose rhythm.  We had to really look to see they were just daddy long legs, but it was nonetheless a little icky.  I just took a deep breath and walked right underneath like the boy-mom I'm supposed to be!

Overall, check out the park, it was really pleasant.

Enchanted Rock

What a beautiful time of year to head to Enchanted Rock!  If you haven't been it's a great central Texas outing.  We drove out there over spring break and had a really great time.  At the very beginning of the summit trail (which is short but steep!) Zack bounded up, no problem.  Sammy tried to insist on being carried.  We got him excited about walking and he went five steps before crashing and skinning one palm and the other elbow!  Still he got going again and then walked almost all of it, up and down. 

Is it always windy on the top?  I think it must be.  I've been at different times of year but it always feels like the wind will knock you over.  When we were on the steepest part I really did fear for Sammy being blown over!  We insisted he hold someone's hand - otherwise we could just see him starting to tumble down and just never stopping! 

Some tips: If you want to camp there make reservations far in advance.  If you just want to hike, get there early! We arrived at 9:30 (it's a two hour drive from Austin) and only had to wait a little but later the park was closed, only letting a car in when a car left.  As we left we counted about 120 cars waiting to get in.  Bring a flashlight if you want to explore the caves.  Finally, dress in layers - it's cooler in the wind but HOT down at the base!

Port Aransas

We love to spend a weekend at the Texas coast each October. We've normally visited an elderly friend there and gone with a group of friends and other families. This year nobody could make it so we weren't planning to go... but Zack had a day off school and we just hated to miss it. So we went just the four of us and ended up having a fabulous time.  We stayed in the same condo place we like, the Sandpiper, and brought groceries for our meals.  That way we didn't have to drive to the beach or to meals and could really enjoy our time.

Zack has always been wary of the waves, but this year he just ran right in. We couldn't believe how much braver he was about getting knocked over and getting water in his face.

See Zack waaaay out in the distance (above) ?

Sammy was much more inclined to play in the sand. I can't blame him - those waves are a lot higher on him compared to his hieght than on the rest of us!

I borrowed my dad's big digital SLR camera and tried it out to see what I could capture.  I really don't know what I'm doing with it, but it was fun to experiment.  I would have liked to do more but I was nervous about getting sand or seawater on it.  I definitely need to try playing around more with the camera to see what I can figure out!

To the Water

You know how everyone says how your kids will shock you by being so different? Well, in most things, my boys are very similar. Their sleeping patterns have been the same (both as infants and as toddlers), their eating habits have been the same (both in nursing and in baby food and now in table food), they are both entertained by really similar things (like books and buses) and they are both quite social.

But looking through the beach pics from our annual October weekend in Port Aransas has me thinking about how different my boys are when it comes to the water. As a young toddler, Zack was very nervous about the ocean. As he grew older, he alternated between timidity and outright fear. He especially did not like the feeling that waves were continually coming closer to him. I think this year, at five years old, was the first year he was really comfortable running in and out of the shallows, filling up the buckets with water.

Sammy, on the other hand, at one and a half years old was already perfectly delighted with the water. He was most fascinated by the little shell creatures that appeared as the water receded and then burrowed themselves back down into the sand, but he was also tickled that his feet became buried in sand as the water swirled around them. He giggled when the waves covered him to his waist and pointed to all the bubbles. He didn't show any of the trepidation that we expected. It made for a very easy and fun time on the beach!

Let's just ride last weekend's wave, shall we?

This was part of last weekend's scene.

This weekend's scene had bloody noses, scraped faces and knees, teeth knocked back into the mouth and all-together too much bleeding. There were some really fun moments this weekend, but I'm not sure they were captured on film. From last weekend we've got plenty of great beach pics, so I'm going to focus on those for a bit. Now that my mom is visiting, we've got more good fun coming, for sure!

The USS Lexington

While we didn't have a chance to go tour replicas of Columbus' ships, we did spend a day (or as much of a day as one could expect with an 18 month old) aboard the USS Lexington, a WWII era aircraft carrier which has been converted into a museum.

Zack was extremely excited about seeing the ship. We had really talked it up - partly because we wanted him to enjoy it but partly out of concern that he would freak out about being on a ship. You see, lately he has a lot of fears about things being unsteady. He has never liked any feeling of instability, even as a young toddler - although he would happily climb higher than my head, he would freak out if he was turned upside down. More recently, he's refused to get in a canoe and been afraid his ceiling fan would fall on him. He even asked that we take things downstairs because he thought they were too heavy for upstairs and would cause our house to collapse (not sure what's up with that one). Then, after we read some stories and information about the Titanic, I was just sure it was going to cause our planned Lexington trip to fail. I had this vision of him crying and refusing to go on board (right after we bought the tickets, no doubt) for fear it wasn't "stable". Hence all the talking up of the Lexington. When he talked to his grandmother about the Titanic and the Lexington in the same conversation, I was standing behind him saying, "And wasn't it very safe and very stable on the Lexington, Grandma?" while nodding vigorously out of his view to indicate she should say it was. I guess it worked because he was thrilled with the whole experience.

It's interesting how steep some of the stairs and low some of the ceilings are! But most of the fun was to be had above the hangar deck - the main deck where most of the "museum-y" stuff is - on the flight deck - the top of the ship where planes take off and land. It was a windy day and the winds on the flight deck felt like it might just knock us over. The kids love wind, so they were in heaven running around. They also loved looking around at the planes and trying the simulators - the ship held 200 planes when it was in service! We loved climbing up to the bridge with all its buttons and dials and big wheels, and also seeing the mechanism that catches the planes. The historical information on the ship's namesake and WWII service was spread out through the lower decks and gave a lot of interesting stories about that time, the ship and related vessels. James and I liked the history, but Zack of course breezed by most of it. In every area, he was ready to move on before everyone else, then me (because I'm not as much of a museum-sign-reader as someone else in my family), and then James at the end, craning his neck to read every word before he had to leave one room for the next one. By the time Sammy had enough of everything, we made it through the whole ship. It was a great experience and one we'll want to do again when the kids are older.

The Nina

Zack has taken a recent interest in Christopher Columbus. I'm sure what started it. I think maybe he thought the rhyme was fun, but then when a reference to Columbus' sailing showed up in his reference book about pirates, he was drawn in to listening to more information.

We found a variety of picture books about him at the library that we've been enjoying. Columbus is an interesting figure, in that much about him is heroic, and much... well, not so much. It's been a learning experience on the Mommy side of things too. If today had more time in it, I'd like to write more about that. Too bad today is already stretched a little thin.

Anyway, we were at the coast this weekend and discovered that they have full size replicas of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria on display in Corpus Christi. They are accurate all the way down to the forests in which the wood for the ships was cut. They were even built in Spain and sailed here (I think in the 1990s). We didn't have time to go to the museum where you can tour the Pinta and the Santa Maria in dry dock, but we did pop down to see the Nina. It's a lot smaller than I expected! You can see from that "No Trespassing" sign that shows up in both photos that these pictures are showing the whole ship. Not the size of vessel I would imagine for an ocean crossing of unknown length and difficulty! We'll be continuing to learn about this, and maybe we'll get back down to Corpus soon to tour the other two ships.